Margaret Taylor; Philanthropist, Zoo Assn. Chief, Museum Volunteer

Margaret “Maggie” Taylor, philanthropist and indefatigable volunteer who turned her fascination with animals into a pioneering presidency of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. and computerization of the bird collection at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, has died. She was 80.

Taylor, a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in 1967, died Saturday in a San Gabriel convalescent home, her family said.

Widowed by the death of Union Oil Co. President Reese H. Taylor in the summer of 1962, she gratefully accepted an invitation from Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty the following spring to serve on a committee to form a zoo. She became president of the zoo association in 1964, shortly after the death of the first elected president.

Taylor worked full time heading a volunteer staff of 215 who operated concession stands and other money-raising projects to care for more than 3,200 animals. She was also in charge of the 168 docents who led tours of the zoo. Taylor personally did everything from handle the switchboard to teach a baby chimpanzee to ride a tricycle.

“It’s a fun job,” she told The Times in 1967 with her hallmark enthusiasm. “It has everything going for it--kids, animals . . . a circus every day.”

In 1969, Taylor turned her attention to the Natural History Museum, zeroing in on birds and mammals. For more than 20 years, she worked at the museum full time without pay, immediately setting out to computerize data about every bird in the institution’s collection. The result was one of the first computerized databases on birds in the world.

“She solely is responsible for initiating a computer program at the Natural History Museum beginning with the vertebrate zoology collections, which include more than 7,850,000 fish, frogs, lizards, snakes, birds and mammals,” curator Robert J. Lavenberg said Tuesday. “These operational databases serve as a tribute to her dedication to the museum and her perseverance.”

Taylor also set up the Taylor Science Fund and solely funded major research expeditions around the world, as well as continuing research in Los Angeles. With a scientist’s zeal, she accompanied curators on an expedition she sponsored to southwest Africa in 1972 to study indigenous birds, mammals, frogs, lizards, snakes and insects. Taylor cranked machinery, labeled and cataloged species, pinned bats and made herself indispensable to the scientists.

Her philanthropy included major financial donations, plus a specimen of a great auk to the museum’s Hall of Birds, and a collection of 17th and 18th century books on birds and mammals to be sold to endow the Taylor Science Fund.

Born Margaret Corrie in rural New York, she moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1926. As a young woman in the Depression, she declined any college education and instead began working as a typist.

She worked for Consolidated Steel, where she met Taylor, who hired her to go to his new staff when he became Union president. There she became associated with the public relations and advertising program and directed the popular national ad series tagged “Free Enterprise.”

After Taylor was widowed with three teenage sons, he married his advertising expert in 1944. The couple went to Washington during World War II to help the Army procure petroleum products.

Taylor is survived by two children, Margaret Elizabeth Taylor of Los Angeles and James Marshall Taylor of Rye, N.Y., and four grandchildren.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the Mrs. Reese H. Taylor Fund at the Natural History Museum Foundation, Cost Center No. 315, 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90007.